Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick.

  • James Bonwick
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    operations of nature, wrapped up in mysterious allegories and enigmatical symbols.” Jamieson, in his Celestial Atlas, remarks, “ the science of the learned Egyptians was their religion.” “All voices,^’ adds a French writer, “lead man into the world of the elements.” But, as the Cam- bridge Christian advocate, Hardwick, finely observes, “ Such veneration of the elements may not indeed have con- sciously involved the worshipper at first in a denial of God’s sovereignty. He may have read in them the tokens, symbols and agents of a spiritual intelligence.” The Assyrian first religion has been equally charged with being nature worship, Mr. St. Chad Boscawen, while thinking “its pantheon was composed of deifications of nature-powers,” admits that other Assyriologists, as Lenor- mant and Sayce, are not of his opinion. Others look to the starry skies for the solution. But, as the authoress of “ Mazzaroth ” shrewdly suggests, “ the first religion was the origin of the emblems of the constella- tions,” and “ it has not been conjectured why the constella- tions should have been so designated as to give rise to these stories.” The learned writer of “Veritas,” Mr. Melville, interprets the mythological stories by the con- stellations, according to a rigorous system of laws, from which there can be no deviation, or which give no play to fancy. Ancestor worship has been also regarded as the prim- eval faith. But, as it supposes the ancestors to be glorified spirits, there is a something behind the doctrine of an earlier date, and even an anterior conception of Deity. The author of “ Sirius,—I’origine de I’idolatrie,” takes the Dogstar, the barker, as one exponent of the idea of thunder being the first association with the supernatural, since the ancients applied such noises “ to the denomination of the Thundering Being'.'